We all have unlimited potential. We keep most of it locked away in a vast, mysterious area of the psyche called the “Shadow.” The Shadow is the birthplace of brilliance, the crucible of creativity.

Paradoxically, it is also the domain of our most destructive impulses.

Fictional characters like serial killer Hannibal Lecter become popular icons because at some level we recognize them as manifestations of dark desires we keep locked away in the dungeon of our Shadow. But Mozart, Shakespeare and Mother Theresa are imprisoned in this very same dungeon.

Dualism does not exist in the Shadow realm. There is no distinction between potential for “good” and potential for “evil” – it’s all the same. That’s what makes the Shadow such a frightening and dangerous place.

Your life is supposed to feel good to you. Before your birth, you knew that the primary component of your physical experience that would offer the greatest value for your personal and collective expansion and joy would be the component of the relationships that you would experience with each other. It was your plan to relish the diversity of your relationships and to choose from them the details that would make up your creations – and here you are.

Before your birth, as you were making the decision to focus yourself into this Leading Edge time-space reality, it was your powerful intention to enjoy every moment of the process. You understood then, from your Non-Physical perspective, that you are a creator and that you were coming into an environment with enormous potential for joyful, satisfying experiences in creation.

Remember the Incredible Hulk TV show with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno? It was an episodic TV series in the 1970s featuring a timid scientist and his monstrous alter ego. Whenever Bruce Banner (Bixby) got angry, he would turn into a rampaging green monster (Ferrigno in body paint), oblivious to reason and bent on destruction. The giant beast was so focused on his own rage that he lashed out at anyone and anything that had the misfortune to be near him.

Fortunately that is just fiction. In real life we don’t turn green when we let anger control us. The rest is fairly accurate, though. It may not manifest itself physically as it did with the Hulk, but anger does transform a person in some very unpleasant ways.

Resentment is a common emotion, though commonly misunderstood. We may not always be able to control our other emotions, but we at least understand anger, love, despair and the rest. Resentment is an emotion that we often feel without fully recognizing it for what it is, or even being able to properly put the name to it.

What is Resentment?
Before we can deal with resentment, we need to understand what it is and how it affects us. Resentment is a feeling of displeasure or indignation that stems from an incident, real or perceived, that is hurtful. When you resent someone it will color all your future interactions, no matter how trivial, with that person.